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TraderVic Posts: 6
12/18/2017
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Are there any strategies and tips as to effectively utilizing Distribution Centers that you vetran players might like to share? Or - if you don't use them, why not?
edited by TraderVic on 12/18/2017
edited by TraderVic on 12/18/2017
edited by TraderVic on 12/18/2017
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Doctor Dread Administrator Posts: 1478
12/19/2017
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If you are selling to a smaller city with your huge fleet, it may take ALL DAY for the ships to sell everything and then move on, especially if others are selling also. If you have a Distribution center in that city. you can set it to sell 10 different things all the time so your fleet can just drop off everything and move on. People usually set them up in their main city or where they like to sell a dozen different products. Its a lot easier to dump on site and let the distribution center sell everything over time.
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TraderVic Posts: 6
12/20/2017
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Okay, that's a good scenario on the sell side. But what about on the buy side? The distribution Center could also be used as an opportunistic "purchasing" agent, I suppose. However I don't see how it is useful on the buy side, due to the very small buy increments allowed (unless of course you level up to increase the volume of purchase for each item you might be interested in, which would allow you to purchase a larger quantity of products per turn, but even so, what then? as you accumulate a stockpile of products, the storge costs escalate - until you haul it all away, presumably to the cities where it is most valued. But if you haul off too much of it and the transport reaches it's sales city destination, you encounter the same situation as you described: "it make take ALL DAY (or multiple days) to sell everything (in your cargo hold).
So it seems to me that the distribution is not as useful as it could be on the buy side. There is also a counter-intuitiveness to your Distribution Center as it is currently implemented. To me, a Distribution Center buys globally, and sells locally, sort of like a sales (or factory) outlet, really. The way you have it, your version of a DC is restricted to both buying AND selling locally. Maybe what you should do is to allow the Distribution Center to buy from one additional city for each level upgrade. The owner would designate the city to be added, and once chosen that city is fixed (unless the city fails, of course)!
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TraderVic Posts: 6
12/20/2017
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If on the other hand, you do not wish to change the Distribution Center in the above-described manner for whatever reason, I would like to propose that - since Distribution Centers are a fixed entity, they receive purchase order fulfillment priority - for any DC in the city, for any products ordered by any of the DC's in the city, their orders are filled ahead of any other orders on a first-come, first-served basis. So all cargo orders are fulfilled only after all DC orders are processed first. Naturally, the number of different products you recieve this fulfillment priority on would depend on your upgrade level. At level 1, only 1 product recieves fulfillment priority; level - 2 products, and so on. This would certainly make DCs more viable on the buy-side.
edited by TraderVic on 12/20/2017
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Maharava Posts: 29
12/20/2017
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Well you can get a higher priority by upgrading the DBC, since it's ratio based and higher levels attempt to buy more. I don't see your logic on letting them buy from other cities - even factory outlets need logistics, and that's what your transports and freighters are. Anyway, I use a network of DBC's at my major trade ports - buy what I need with it, send in a cargo fleet that drops off my product, picks up my purchases etc.
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